The ACE: An increasingly popular California rail line that actually works for working people

A full-scale mock-up of a high-speed train is displayed at the state Capitol in Sacramento in February 2015. Joe Mathews suggests the ACE should serve as a model for trail projects in California.(Photo11: Rich Pedroncelli/AP file)

As the ACE pulls into the Santa Clara station, the conductor begins apologizing for his train.

“I’m sorry, but this is not the Amtrak!” he bellows across the platform “And this is not Caltrain! If you want the Caltrain to San Francisco, do not board this train!”

This warning is useful: The ACE uses some of the same tracks but doesn’t go the same places as Amtrak and Caltrain. It’s also fitting: ACE is important to California because of what it is not.

It doesn’t operate around the clock, like L.A.’s Metro. It’s not tourist-friendly, like San Diego’s trolley, and it doesn’t connect our fanciest precincts, like BART. It’s not expensive to construct, like a high-speed rail project. And it’s not losing riders, like so much transit these days.

Here’s what the ACE is: a real, live unappreciated story of successful transportation in California. And it is planning expansion that — if Californians can move past the brain-dead populist politics surrounding the gas tax — should point to a future in which Californians move around more easily.

The ACE — for Altamont Corridor Express — is modest. Its service consists of just four round trips each weekday — four trains from Stockton to San Jose, via the East Bay in the morning, and four trains back at the end of the day. The ACE Train is pure commuter rail, bridging the mismatch between where the jobs are in the Bay Area — Silicon Valley — and where people can afford homes — places like Livermore, Lathrop, Tracy and Manteca.

ACE started 20 years ago with just two daily round trips. But the last six years have seen the ACE Train double its ridership to more than 5,000 people per day and 1.3 million people annually. At a time when transit use has been flat or declining, ACE is one of the fastest growing train lines in the country.

ACE’s success suggests that regional commuter rail lines — like Metrolink in Southern California, or Caltrain in the Bay — might be enhanced in ways that connect them efficiently to other transit and to high-speed rail in the future.

In the years ahead, ACE will expand in two different directions at once. In the 2020s, one new branch of the service will head up to Sacramento. The other branch will extend south to Modesto, Ceres, and eventually Merced.

This initiative will connect the Bay Area, Capital Region, and San Joaquin Valley while putting ACE at the two most important new transportation hubs of 21st-century California.

The first is San Jose’s Diridon Station, which links together Caltrain, Amtrak, and Santa Clara’s VTA light-rail system. High-speed rail’s first phase would end there, and the station is next door to the site of a future Google “village.” The second hub is downtown Merced, a future high-speed rail stop that is already growing with the expansion of the University of California campus there.

Unfortunately, this second extension — to Merced and Modesto — is endangered because it is funded by the controversial gas tax increase that Proposition 6, on this November’s ballot, would repeal. In fact, the geographic center of the fight is the ACE corridor. Two local lawmakers — State Sen. Anthony Canella, a Ceres Republican, and Assemblyman Adam Gray, a Merced Democrat — voted for the gas tax increase in exchange for $400 million for the ACE expansion.

Fortunately, riding ACE is less complicated than understanding gas tax politics. One recent afternoon, I boarded the train at its origin, Diridon in San Jose, and then marveled at the crowds that embarked at the next two stations. The first, Santa Clara, has a shuttle bus to the terminals at San Jose’s airport, while the second, Great America, was mobbed with employees of tech firms that run buses between their offices and the ACE.

Their entry left the train completely full. At the Pleasanton station, new riders, who connect there with BART by shuttle bus, squeezed on.

The train emptied out over the next four stops — at Livermore, Vasco Road, Tracy, and Lathrop/Manteca. ACE riders told me that the traffic jams getting in and out of station parking lots are the most difficult part of the trip. The other complaints I heard were about the ACE’s unreliable Wi-Fi and the cost of tickets (monthly passes can run more than $300, and round trip tickets can exceed $20). But the trip is still cheaper, when accounting for gas and parking, than driving.

My train was mostly empty on the last leg to the lovely Cabral Station, on the edge of Stockton’s downtown. From there, I would walk to a dinner interview at Angelina’s Spaghetti House, an unfussy old Italian restaurant. And I didn’t have to hurry — the ACE had arrived five minutes early.

Let’s hope California’s rail future has similar timing.

Joe Mathews(Photo11: Courtesy)

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. Email him at joe@zocalopublicsquare.org.